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Review by mark700 
Posted: 94 days ago
member for 95 days, 5 visits, last login: 74 days ago
 Talkeetna,Matanuska Susitna,AK
 Contract price not specified.
 "It works off-grid, best option available"
 "Have to buy the equipment, pay for install in Alaska"
 "Best you're going to get out in the sticks."
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We tried cellular for internet, excruciatingly slow, voice has priority over data at towers. We pay 10 bucks more per month now ($60) for the basic service, 700kbps down, 128kbps up, and it screams compared to cellular. There's only one dealer for Alaska, Alaska Satellite Internet, up in Fairbanks. He has installers scattered around the state in most populated areas. Ordering was easy and a local installer was referred to me. He came out and did a site survey, gave me an estimate for the install. He came back on the scheduled day, did the install, we were up on the 'net with no problems. We got the standard dish (.74 meter/ 1 watt transmitter). No real problems, we've had to reset the modem a couple times (it seemed 'stuck').
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Review by hughesnetbad
UPDATED: 96 days ago
member for 105 days, 2 visits, last login: 69 days ago
Lineville,Clay,AL
Contract price not specified.
"Nothing, alleged to be the Worst company I have ever been with, Nasty, dirty, filthy, Goats,"
"alleged Violators of the Uniform Commercial Code, Truth in Advertising, alleged to be a terrible company"
"Dont do it, Stay away, Stay Far Away, alleged to have over sold available bandwidth, slow connection, bad connection"
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The following are allegations and opinions.
This customer alleges that this is worst Experience I have ever had with an ISP, truly as bad as a bald headed Goat and stinks as badly too, no offense to the goat.
Service is terrible, no customer support, outsourced non english speaking personal,
currently paying over 100 per month, I do not get the advertised speeds, I do not get half the advertised speeds, I do not get 25 percent of the advertised speeds, I do not get 15 percent of the advertised speeds,
constant connectivity issues, installer charged and over charged, left cable lying on the lawn did nothing to create a professional appearance or install at all.
I have never seen a more unorganized business plan, once you get installed you will never speak to an american again unless you find out a US phone number to call, even then you will not have an option to speak with anyone in the US.
You have to have a pin number in order to speak to someone in the US the worst experience I have ever had, and I have been with Bellsouth, ATT, COX, Mediacom, as well as other broadband companies, including starband, and never have I seen such a mess these people could care less about you as a customer, why do I say that, look at all the complaints, not only here but other places online, and you will never see someone from hughes either defend or even apologize for the poor service.
I allege that it is because they do not care and it is because they have abdicated their responsibility to the customer by isolating themselves from their customer.
They are alleged to be just a little better than dialup but really why waste your time.
This is my opinion and as such may not be the opinion of dslreports, this is based on my customer experience which I feel is more than enough to justify my opinion.
Is it better than dial-up? barely, I wish I had mediacom back and that is saying something...
Attachments:
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Review by feustond
Posted: 101 days ago
member for 101 days, 0 visits, last login: 101 days ago
Muncie,Delaware,IN
Contract price not specified.
"fast and so far very reliable!"
"if you live in a rural area than i would get this!"
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i live in the country and this is all i can get and i was very skeptical after reading all the bad reviews..but we got it anyways and wow this is a very good connection. its fast and reliable so far and the installer did a good job. i tested my speeds and they are what we ordered. we have the hn9000 modem. so far so good!
Followup comments:  deepdiver
join:2002-06-23
Cullowhee, NC
| HughesNet The first installer said i had to cut some trees. My tree guy said I didn't. The second installer got it done very easily, I receive at 174. I get what I paid for 1MB/120KB. Downloads of files is good but ... the actual surfing using real websites is still slow, not much better than dialup. Is this due to the 520ms latency? | |
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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 103 days ago
(review was emailed from domain att.net)
Los Altos,Santa Clara,CA
Contract price not specified.
"speed, support, connectivity, etc."
"avoid at all costs"
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I tried Hughesnet for my internet service as I live in the Hills of San Jose
and have no access to DSL. Hughesnet performance was absolutely horrible.
Note: they do not guarantee performance and they sure don't deliver. Their
tech support was out of India, their billings was out of the Philippines. I
spent hours collecting performance data for them and was not able to get the
system performance to much better than dial-up. I finally took the system
out but they still wanted me to pay for the remaining service. Finally wrote
a letter to the chairman of Hughes to get this resolved.
Followup comments: Luminaris
join:2005-12-01
Winchester, VA | Question Just curious, what was the final outcome? Did they still make you pay? | |
| | 
compuguybna
join:2009-06-17
Nashville, TN
| Re: Question Write
bbbdc@hughes.net
or
executivecustomercare@hughesnet
They are read by most everyone in the company.... Including Office of the President.
(Of course, you must already have documented cases with tech support logged, and must have already spoke with Tier-2) | |
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Review by ruralchic
Posted: 109 days ago
member for 2.1 years, 41 visits, last login: 14 days ago
Windsor,Broome,NY
Contract price not specified.
"Suppose to be broadband,when it's up works fairly well"
"out sourced tech support ,can't understand them.costly"
"Don't have Hughesnet installed"
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Hughesnet installed May22,2009.worked well for 3 months when modem took a crap.Then I had to deal with the tech support.Who are outsourced to India,couldn't undersand what they were saying and repeatedly holding on the line .Kept saying I understand alot.They had me try several things from unpluging cables ,power plug waiting thirty minutes and then plugging back in. Finally after an afternoon on the phone.They sent new modem and power pack.Then on July 9th,2009 The damn thing went down ,no lights on modem .It is HN9000.Dealing with tech support was awful.I'm still not online .I have had tech come out 3 times .Which is costing me more money to an already expensive service.So i made a consumer complaint.and Wrote a letter to Hughesnet But no where could I fined the number or would anybody give me the number to corporate headquarters.As of this date August 22,09 no browsing for me.
Followup comments: hughesnetbad
join:2009-08-26
Lineville, AL
 ·HughesNet Satellit..
| Typical, today I spent over an hour talking to support Terrible experience, after 30 min of talking tech support person in halting english says that, It appears that the problem is with the website you are trying to view,
I say, what? I am not able to connect to any website.
tech support,
Oh you are unable to connect to any browsing website?
I tear out my hair and say as calmly as I can manage, no that is why I have called you today, because I cannot connect to the internet.
Tech support
O then let us check to see if your computer is at fault.
Me,
there is nothing wrong with my computer it is brand new
Tech support ok then let us check to see if your modem is damaged.
Me,
Fine, what ever, check modem, nothing wrong with modem,
check cables, nothing wrong with cables, check butterflys on the wall nothing wrong with hey wait, what,
Ok, see you will go crazy if you listen to them for long, but for sure, they will never ever admit that it is something that hughes did, ok it is always your fault, for being a customer,
it is always some other persons fault, or it is the fault of the website you are trying to get to or it is the fault of your computer, or it is the fault of your cable lines,
never is it the fault of hughes, which I find to be an insult.
But you know that already... | |
| ruralchic
join:2007-10-10
Windsor, NY
·HughesNet Satellit..
|  Hughsnet Not Worth it.
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 Review by Commander
UPDATED: 118 days ago
member for 2.3 years, 490 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Keeling,Pittsylvania,VA
Contract price not specified.
"The only good point: It's faster than dial-up"
"Costs too much-FAP is a pain-They charge extra $5 for a paper invoice"
"If you can get anything else, do it"
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Once they have you, they control you. The Fair Access Policy (FAP) is ridiculous! Paying 60 or more dollars per month for less than half of what you can get with DSL is terrible. The cost of the equipment adds insult to injury.
Latency is awful. Most everything you try to do is delayed by whole seconds not milliseconds. The results of a speed test will bring tears to your eyes.
Minimum: $59.99 per month + cost of equipment
If you are very lucky you may get 125 Kbits/sec upload speed. Download speed may reach as high as 500 Kbits/sec. The speeds vary quite a bit.
I would never use them again. I'd rather use dial-up.
Followup comments: 
HughesSUX
@prserv.net
| No Linux, No Vpn , no more Hughes Net | |
|
southernohio
@direcpc.com
| HUGHESNET sucks I installed Jan 2007. I have NEVER received over 1mbs. I went to tier 4 within the first month. Finally I gave up. I have suffered with 300-500 kbps since then.
Here is the kicker. I have the pro-plus $79.95 plan, with a 2WATT system on top of that. Computer has dual 3.2 gig processors, almost 500 gig harddrive, dual SLI motherboard, blah blah.
I have upgraded my software, and went back to Hughesnet ARAB accent speaking M'fers and they still won't help me.
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Commander
Duty is ours. Consequences are God's.
Premium
join:2007-07-29
Keeling, VA
clubs:
 ·Verizon Online DSL
·HughesNet Satellit..
| Re: HUGHESNET sucks said by southernohio :
I installed Jan 2007. I have NEVER received over 1mbs. I went to tier 4 within the first month. Finally I gave up. I have suffered with 300-500 kbps since then.
Here is the kicker. I have the pro-plus $79.95 plan, with a 2WATT system on top of that. Computer has dual 3.2 gig processors, almost 500 gig harddrive, dual SLI motherboard, blah blah.
I have upgraded my software, and went back to Hughesnet ARAB accent speaking M'fers and they still won't help me.
I had my transmitter set for 2 watts also. It didn't help. You are quite correct in your statement, "HughesNet Sucks!" | |
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Review by lrymal
UPDATED: 124 days ago
member for 5.7 years, 149 visits, last login: 3 days ago
Joaquin,Shelby,TX
Contract price not specified.
"I'm rural! No cell, no cable modem, no DSL. This is all I got!"
"Latency (unavoidable due to it being satellite) may cause website timeouts"
"So far, I'm delighted, for my purposes (no video gaming, etc.)"
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Nothing really to add to the many other messages, except I would probably be the primary HughesNet customer. There is NOTHING out here for high speed internet, and dial-up has too many drop-outs on a telephone modem. A T-1 line would be over $1000.00/mo with the service reps I have talked to. No microwave, no wireless.
I am using the HughesNet 9000 and larger dish, with the small business plan (B-510), contract price is about $200/mo, I think. With my being so far out in the rural frontier, the value for the money has been realistic. But, if you want and need high speed, you gotta do what you gotta do. Realizing there is expected latency and begrudgingly accepting that, I am pleased with the performance---so far. My speed is great--I'm averaging about 2500 - 3000 down, about 300 - 450 up. I have had no loss of service, other than during intense rains in which the clouds are just too thick.
With all of that said, I will not be using this for VoIP, gaming. My hook up is with a LinkSys wireless router---802.11g.
Latency is another issue to consider. Some websites have an abundance of using auxiliary services to bring their webpage up. As such, if the satellite latency offers too much of a delay in getting these, then there will be a timeout. If this occurs frequently, just refresh a couple of times so all of these little sub resources can finally made it in the web browser's cache. My bank uses nearly 300 of these little critters just to generate the first page of its login screen!!!! Once you are finally past all of that, then you have a direct pipe to some fairly fast accessing.
I decided to see how far to push my 9000 transceiver and fired up SKYPE, did a video conference, with the LinkSys wireless router in tow. SKYPE did well, and oVoo video conferencing does well, also. I mean, you don't get 24 fps, but 2 - 5 fps is typical and the audio works. Everything does good for a conference.
I am not so pleased with the webmail, though. It has a rather draconian spam filter and no adjustment for spam sensitivity, other than you going through one message at a time. If your Hughesnet mail is set to shoot your e-mail to a POP mail reader (Outlook, Eudora), HughesNet mail may prevent your getting your mail until you release the frozen message from HughesNet mail. Basicallly, this means I have to daily check HughesNet mail, in addition to my e-mail client. EDIT: Put in your filter *.* for addresses to check. This way, all e-mail received will go to your POP where you can customize your SPAM filter.
I am on a year of HughesNet Service and I really enjoy it. Yes, if cable modem service or DSL was available, I would switch because of satellite latency. In a heartbeat.
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 Review by Belinrahs
UPDATED: 133 days ago
member for 2.2 years, 157 visits, last login: 2 days ago
Nashville,Barry,MI
Contract price not specified.
"It's internet access"
"Horrible tech support, Mail, DNS, speed, latency....it's a problem"
"There's lots of possibilities. If you're considering Hughes, also consider dial-up. Hughes should consider dial-up a COMPETITOR."
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HughesNet (when I got it, it was called Direcway), was the worst investment and waste of money we made in anything. The easiest way for me to explain this to you is to go by category.
Pre Sales information: 2. They both advertised _and_ told me over the phone that this was unlimited service. I learned the truth...the hard way. I called Hughes about 2 months ago, when I was complaining about how my speed had literally come to a halt. This lady, clearly a bit full of her self, tells me I'm "fapped". I was quite confused... "fapped"? What did that mean? I'm soon told that I may only download 500 megabytes, according to my plan, a day. I argued with her that I was told upon order time that this service was unlimited, and she was quite confident that they would never say such a thing. She clearly thought I was lying. It got to the point that she thought I was some mindless retard... she was combating my responses to what she had to say, in a combative and "you're such an idiot" attitude. I finally asked for the manager, and she automatically says, in a nice voice, "OK sir, thank you for calling HughesNet. I'll transfer you. Have a great day!" I wait for another 30 minutes, and I get absolutely nowhere. Still listening to this same, may I say, HORRIBLE guitar riff! I finally hung up, and called it a day.
Install Co-ordination: 4. This was pretty good. I was impressed. This guy knew what he was doing...he put it right up there, and made quite a few adjustments, obviously dodging the trees. The only thing is that he had to call some phone number because the self-commisioning wasn't working correctly..but it was promptly sorted out.
Connection reliability: 2. It goes out on sunny days, with the clearest of skies! Tech support is no help.
Tech Support: 1! They can't fix the simplest of problems! They are obviously reading off this script written by a 2-years-old boy..just pitiful.
Mail,DNS,News: 1. The mail service is ugly, and I've had multiple problems with it. DNS is painfully slow, but thanks to the hughes forums, I'm using opendns now... And I don't use the news, but it's provided by myway.com.
Value for money: 2. 1000 dollar equipment, and 100 dollars a month for this junk. Can I switch back to dialup, boss?
Q/A:
- What other options did you consider for broadband: There isn't any other broadband available out here in the "boonies". UPDATE: There is now EVDO Rev. A through Sprint; that's what I'm now using.
-What SPEED/package did you order at what monthly price: 1000 dollar equipment, 100 dollars a month. Advertised speed is 1.0mbits down, 100kbits up, "Small Office" plan.
-How was the order and install process: Read "Install Co-ordination"
-What brand/model was the supplied equipment: DW6000, with 1 meter dish.
-What good or bad experiences most struck you? Read a bit above folks...
-Beli
Followup comments: dt1401
join:2007-10-07
| I agree 100% What I say about HughesNET, pull a Nancy Regan and Just Say NO!!!
Worse thing I ever done and most expensive. I have only had this system since April which I don't like but have been living with. I called in on 9-28-2007 because I wanted to pay off the equipment financing. I took a forever for the agent to understand what I wanted to do. The agent was like you have to take care of the balance due first. Well heck I had just paid it a couple weeks ago and next payment was not due till 10-18-2007. So I just paid it the $106.00 which is my normal bill with there $5 paper statement fee. Then she was like ok you owe $400.00 on your system. I was like ok that's fine. She took my $400.00 payment. Two-three days later I get a bill for $800.00. I with two $400.00 equipment payment line items. So I go online and look and see, shows my credit card payment posted and a remainder balance of $400.00. So I didn't thank much of it and emailed billing@HugesNet.com and requested someone e-mail me back with a resolution. Only reply I got was the auto-generated one. After a week I went back to my account online. same deal. So I decided to call. The young philipino was like no sir those charges are valid. We don't reverse valid charges. Could not make her understand what i was saying. Last time I checked there was only wane pimp size dish on my house. She is like no sir you have two systems. I just hung up and thought I would tried it again the next day. Lord same deal, it would be nice if they would stop reading scripts and listen. After the "No Sir I can't help you" I asked for a manager. Well got a manager and all of a sudden the system went down for maintenance. I explained the entire thing to her and she was like sir I cant help you. Then I asked is the scheduled maintenance you have an estimated time frame it will be done. No sir we don't know. So I just hung up went online I could look at my account, not sure why she couldn't. So I tried another e-mail. I am being to wonder if I am ever going to get this fixed. I get a letter that DSL is going to be in my area soon from AT&T. You better bet I'll be paying that $300.00 early contract fee. Same speed not bandwidth limit and $19.95 no contract. I am going to post this on as many boards as I can find, and I hope I hit my bandwidth limit. My tech support experience has just been long and drawn out. One tech told me to unplug my modem for 10 days. I just don't call anymore. I hate it when you hit the wrong button or 0 there IVR says EXCUSE ME?. Now that's rude. | |
|
TBizone
@tmodns.net
| Are You Guys Telling Me To Cancel My Install Tomorrow? Sure sounds like it. I need High-Speed for online gaming, specifically, Halo 3. Anyway, Earthlink has offered me $20/month service with an 18-month contract. They're giving me the hardware. The service is through HughesNet. I was all set and excited, but I called the rep to make sure I could play XBOX and she said her system wouldn't support it. I asked for clarification and she had her tech/install guy call me. He says that because of the altitude of the satellite, there will be some lag-time. I was chatting with the earthlink people and they say that's not the case. I can get DSL form the local cable company but that's at three times the price. Can anyone shed some light? I also forgot to consider the Foreign Tech Support and the weather problems. Not to mention the fact that I'll now be dealing with two non-related companies, instead of one local company. Thanks for your input. | |
| |
currentfool
@direcpc.com | Re: Are You Guys Telling Me To Cancel My Install Tomorrow? do NOT go with any satalite service if you want to play real time games. do NOT got with Hughes no matter what | |
| rural girl
join:2009-07-30
Snohomish, WA
| Try Wireless before getting satellite internet As of yesterday I am out of my contract with Hughes Net and I couldn't be more thrilled. We moved from a large city to a rural area, and were disappointed to find out that we couldn't get DSL.
After being disappointed with the speeds we upgraded to a higher plan. Right after that nothing changed. I spent hours on the phone with tech support. Finally, they sent out a technician. He adjusted our dish to communicate with a different satellite that had less people on it. This actually got us very close to the speeds that were promised.
But, for us, the killer with satellite is the latency. I needed to be able to work from home, and when I was using the server there was always a typing delay. Plus, my husband couldn't do any work from home.
After lots of research I am happy to say that we are now happy with our wireless internet from cyberonic. The plan we are using is with Sprint, but there are no limits. They gave us a modem with the Sprint card so all of our computers have internet access at the same time. They advertise speeds up to 1.5. My average speed over 5 days (with 80 entries) was 741 down and 350 up. Yes, I was getting similar speeds with Hughes, but the HUGE difference is the latency. With Hughes the latency was about 1000 ms, and with cyberonic I'm averaging about 300 ms. With much less lag time we are able to do so much more. We've heard that we may be able to get closer to the 1.5 consistently with an amplifier, but, for now, this works for us. When Sprint updates all their towers to 4G we should get even faster speeds.
It isn't cheap though. We are paying $69 a month for the first 6 months, then $89 for the other 6 months. But I was paying $69 for the higher Hughes Net plan and I was very unhappy. We had also looked at the wireless plan from millenicom ($59 a month, no long term contract), but decided to go with cyberonic. (When I read some millenicom reviews some people suspected that millenicom is actually monitoring bandwidth, even though they say they aren't.)
So, for all the people who live in rural areas or can't get dsl or cable, I just wanted to give my impression about Hughes Net "high speed internet." Although it is faster than dial up, the latency prevents a lot of operations or makes them very very slow. Also, forget about using this in a snowstorm, heavy winds, etc. I would recommend wireless over Hughes any day. (Clearwire is cheaper than cyberonic, but they have TERRIBLE reviews, so we didn't even consider them.) Good luck in your quest for high speed internet! | |
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Review by jmr
UPDATED: 133 days ago
member for 147 days, 11 visits, last login: 112 days ago
Hampton,Hampton City,VA
Contract price not specified.
"better then dial up"
"poor overall performance, degrades during day, download limited"
"use if no other high speed available"
| Pre Sales information:
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no other high speed options available
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Review by SKS_SKanz
Posted: 138 days ago
member for 1.3 years, 4 visits, last login: 138 days ago
Paris,Lafayette,MS
Contract price not specified.
"Fair bandwidth occasionally"
"Onlt time bandwidth is decent is between 2 am and 6 am EST"
"If you can find anything, DSL Lite or similar, go with it instead"
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Due to an accident I find myself staying with my sister way out in the country temporarily while I heal. They have only 2 choices for internet access, dial up or Hughes.net.
They chose Hughes for the alleged broadband. The first thing I find out is about the Hughes FAP, fair access policy. For $59 a month you get 200 MB per day download and if you exceed that then you get shot down to sub-dial up speed for at least 24 hours.
There are higher bandwidth tiers but they are priced up into the ludicrous range.
For example: for 5 Mbps download speed you have to pay $349 per month.
At home I pay $49.95 a month for 10Mbps via Cable with a solid connection.
Since I've been stuck in the sticks using this pathetic service I've lost connection over and over eerytime a drop of water falls from the sky either here or in freaking Denver. Add that to their apparent never ending "technical difficulties" on their end and you have a virtual on line ni9ghtmare. Bottom line is I can hardly wait to get wrll enough to go home to my Comcast cable connection.
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